> it is not acknowledging my modem. I have a PCTel AMR modem. How do I> set it up. My friend who knows a little about unix, said he can't> get his computer to recognize his internal modem either, so he uses> an external.

The basic, low-level way to run PPP in Linux is to copy the ppp-on,ppp-off and ppp-on-dialer scripts from /usr/share/doc/ppp-x.y.z/scriptsto /etc/ppp, edit them for your configuration, and then start and stopPPP with ppp-on and ppp-off.

There are also higher-level tools like kppp, but I never use them.

Internal PCI modems are probably Winmodems and may or may not workwith Linux. Try the Linmodem Howto, and avoid Winmodems, they're areal pain.